The ever-increasing reliance on information and the computing systems that produce, process, distribute, and maintain such information in its various forms, continues to put great demands on techniques for providing data storage and access to that data storage. Business organizations can produce and retain large amounts of communication items. Large organizations, for example, can generate and retain billions of emails, instant messages and telecommunications (e.g., voicemail, phone records, facsimile records, and the like), annually. Such an organization can also generate and retain millions of documents that are distributed among individual members of the organization. These various types of communication items can result in a complex web of interrelationships between individuals within an organization who distribute and receive the communication items, and the communication items themselves due to the relationships between various communications items.
In the event that an organization becomes involved in litigation, these complex webs of people and data need to be detangled during preparation for discovery. Plaintiffs and defendants engaged in litigation can be expected to electronically produce at least a relevant portion of the retained communication items. Current discovery rules require production of relevant electronically stored information early in discovery proceedings. But review of communication items using traditional search methods can be slow, is largely linear, and can tax an organization's information technology resources to the point of disruption of normal services.
It is therefore desirable to have a mechanism for distilling and/or presenting the vast quantities of communication items retained by an organization. It is further desirable that such a mechanism provide tools for interpreting the relationships between people and communication items, targeting important relationships and/or communication items, and/or viewing communication items of interest.